Get set for food carnival
Updated: 2016-05-20 07:32
By Mike Peters(China Daily)
|
|||||||||
Lobster Bobo |
His goal for the festival, he says, is not to be all about Rio but to showcase the breadth of the country's cuisine. So his packing includes pirarucu, an Amazon fish, on dry ice. There is air-dried beef from Brazil's northeast. ("It's not rock-hard and super salty like jerk beef", though the latter is also in his culinary bag of tricks.) There is coarse-ground cassava flour that will be cooked to a polenta-like consistency. There is pulp of acai, the healthful purple berry that's become trendy as the world's latest superfood.
There is also tucupi, fermented cassava juice, and therein lies a tale.
Angry yuca can be fatally poisonous, unless it's boiled for seven days straight to eliminate its hydrocyanic acid. (Happy yuca has the acid too, but not as much; even so, the tubers cannot be eaten raw.)
In a country of meat eaters - and in Brazil "meat" means beef, Nako espouses a nose-to-tail philosophy that avoids wasting any part of any animal. He says, however, that this is not really typical of his fellow citizens, whom he describes as not very adventurous eaters.
"We love our chicken hearts," he says, "but that's about as wild as we get."
Brazilian tradition is his repertoire, but he is always seeking different and informal approaches to classic recipes - quick to substitute ingredients when the precise item he wants isn't available.
Longtime fans of intestines and other offal, Nako and his colleague Tito Pal perk up when my Brazilian colleague suggests they might like to try such dishes at a local Chinese eatery. An hour later, they were wielding chopsticks in a hutong near Beijing's Gulou area, all smiles.
- Russia to build first cruise liner in 60 years
- LinkedIn, Airbnb match refugees with jobs, disaster survivors with rooms
- Duterte 'willing to improve ties' with Beijing
- Canadian PM to introduce transgender rights bill
- Hillary Clinton says her husband not to serve in her cabinet
- New York cake show designs fool your eyes
- China Daily, celebrating 35 years
- Six things you may not know about Grain Buds
- China Beijing International High-tech Expo
- Highlights at Google I/O developers conference
- Nation celebrates International Museum Day
- Body brushwork creates vivid animals
- Can you still recognize these cities?
- A private museum owner's devotion to cultural protection
Most Viewed
Editor's Picks
Anti-graft campaign targets poverty relief |
Cherry blossom signal arrival of spring |
In pictures: Destroying fake and shoddy products |
China's southernmost city to plant 500,000 trees |
Cavers make rare finds in Guangxi expedition |
Cutting hair for Longtaitou Festival |
Today's Top News
Liang avoids jail in shooting death
China's finance minister addresses ratings downgrade
Duke alumni visit Chinese Embassy
Marriott unlikely to top Anbang offer for Starwood: Observers
Chinese biopharma debuts on Nasdaq
What ends Jeb Bush's White House hopes
Investigation for Nicolas's campaign
Will US-ASEAN meeting be good for region?
US Weekly
Geared to go |
The place to be |